The invention relates generally to the field of photography, and in particular to photo collections. More specifically, the invention relates to a method of generating a photo album from an index print of customer""s photographs.
There are numerous types of photo albums within the prior art that include pictures arranged into a more easily viewed format that is more enjoyable than those kept in a box or an envelope. However, a great number of people who take photographs don""t have the time, confidence or materials necessary to perform the task of setting up and creating photo albums.
Other prior art disclosures have taught the use of thumbnail sketches that are low resolution versions of images requiring less storage space than the full resolution versions. Picture-it software, by Eastman Kodak Company, teaches the creation of photo albums from digital thumbnails, and allows custom creations, and print at Kodak Kiosk(trademark) centers. Picture-it software has a shortcoming. however, in that consumers must visit the Kiosk center and provide a digitized version of their images to the Kiosk center. Moreover, the thumbnail sketches used by a Kiosk center have no unique identifier prevent a broad access mechanism.
There exist within the prior art services provided, such as Photo-NetT(trademark) by PictureVision(trademark) that will scan photographs in a high-quality JPEG format and provide a thumbnail image of the scanned images on the internet. The consumer then selects the desired images to have prints made. Photo-Net(trademark) has the shortcoming that the consumers are required to be computer literate and does not provide the great number of consumers a means by which they can select photographs to create photocollages and photo albums.
It should be apparent from the foregoing discussion that there remains a need within the art for a method by which consumers can create photocollages and photo albums in a manner that is as simple as ordering prints
The present invention addresses the foregoing discussed shortcomings in the prior art by creating an index print having a unique identifier so that a stored digital version of the image can be quickly accessed from a file. Accordingly, the present invention addresses the need for an improved method of generating photo albums from consumer photographs that requires a minimum amount of effort but yields a high-quality and is reasonably priced.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above. Briefly summarized, according to one aspect of the present invention, a method of constructing a photo album includes the steps of providing a plurality of images; generating an index print of thumbnails from the digital images, the index print including a machine readable means for selecting one or more of images represented by the thumbnails to be included in the photo album; selecting one or more of the thumbnail images on the index print; reading the selected thumbnails from the index print with a scanner; and constructing a photo album from the digital images represented by the selected thumbnails.
These and other aspects, objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be more clearly understood and appreciated from a review of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments and appended claims, and by reference to the accompanying drawings.
The present invention has the following advantages: Allows the user to have (1) an easy method of choosing photos for creating professional looking albums, (2) duplication of albums, and (3) keeping album files for later use.